Sophie Henry

It was a grim, cold evening on December 11, 2013.

As my first semester at Yale neared its end, reading period loomed over real-life Hogwarts. “The only A that matters is the one between the Y and the L,” my fellow classmates said, using me as a pawn for their own reassurance. I only took four courses that semester. My quant classes — “Linear Algebra” and “Microeconomics” — didn’t faze me as an aspiring economics major. Then there was my writing credit, “Women, Food & Culture,” where my essay on the history of the hotdog secured me at least an A-minus in the class. Now if I just focused my reading period efforts on my fourth course, a measly humanities credit, then I’d come out of my first months in New Haven a straight A student. That is: Y-A-A-A-A-L-E.

My phone vibrated with a text from our Yale Women’s Basketball group message: “The naked run is tonight.”

My teammates assured me this wasn’t one of our dreadful conditioning workouts. Phew. Rather, the naked run was a semi-annual tradition that happened on the eve of finals. Students broke their self-imposed quarantines and congregated in the library basement, where they witnessed naked bodies bouncing through the labyrinth of books. Not the cute, almost-appropriate nakedness where a sports bra constitutes a gym shirt. This was braless. No undies either. Few students volunteered as tribute for the naked run and even fewer did so before the spring semester of their senior year. And no one in their right mind dared to prance naked among students they’d share lecture halls with for the next three years.

However, my right mind had been replaced by a free mind in recent months, uncaged and filled with possibility. After years of hiding behind my queer closet doors, I had finally reached the “Gay Ivy” — a place where I could kiss girls and fall in love. A place where I could be naked.

I arrived at the top of the stacks of Sterling Library at 10:30 p.m., where I was greeted by one too many dangling penises. Breasts brushed up against the spines of books as a spectrum of butt sizes squeezed between shelves. For a minute of my lifetime, I was the most overdressed person in the room. I stepped out of my sweatpants and stripped down to my goosebumping skin.

Smiles stretched across faces as if smiles could reach far enough to cover naked limbs and insecurities. Then there were a few oddballs with the sharp pupils and perfect posture reserved for campus networking events. They were probably only there so they could add it to their resume. “Would running naked be a technical skill or a soft skill? Perhaps if I ran to the front of the pack it would constitute leadership experience.” These are the sorts of diversions one has when nude in a room filled with future presidents and CEOs.

At 11:30 p.m. we got in formation and weaved our naked conga line through sixteen stories of stacks. Bodies jiggled like Flubber down the stairwell as Axe deodorant mixed with the whiff of worn books. Once we reached the ground level, our conga line morphed into a game of Red Rover. Our horizontal line stampeded towards the double doors, where I imagined a crowd of clothed students anxiously awaiting us like paparazzi. Just a few more naked strides before we unleashed our primitive pandemonium.

BANG. I bulldozed through the doors. Eyes I’d never spoken to before were now ten feet away from my exposed body, studying me like a zoo animal. My teammates brought their hands to jaw-dropped mouths. Clothed people didn’t know where to point their wide eyes, and neither did I anymore. The whole space was free. A boundless wilderness. I skipped down the tile floor, my mind moving me forward as my body leaped toward the cool white lights. The breeze tickled my bare skin, and I sensed the shredding of an armor I never knew I had — perfectionism, imposter syndrome, all my self-doubts dropping like dandruff. I wanted to run naked in place for the rest of my moments. I wanted my dreams to be naked, my worries to be naked, my naked to be naked. Because if I let go of all these layers, then maybe I could just be me.

I received my first career B that semester — in U.S. Gay and Lesbian History, nonetheless. But I got the A that mattered, and that, my friends, is the A between the N and the K. Vulnerable. Free. Naked.